Of Growing Up
by Nobelplex
Summary: Modern Day AU. Anidala. If those two things don't interest you then this probably isn't the story you are looking for.


_**ERMAGAWD** I wrote a part of a story! **ERMAGAWD** I still can't write! _

_Either way this was fun and I do plan on writing more for it with time. This story will only be snapshots though, not a full-in-and-out multi-chaptered tale. If you liked it thus far then let me know. If you didn't then please find it in your heart to still love me. _

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**Snapshot I**

He is younger than her by several years and his face still holds a cherub like quality to it that she had only in the last few years lost. He tells her he is eight-_and_-a-**half** and that he doesn't _need_ a babysitter, but that he will allow her to stay anyway.

He is an amusing, funny little boy, this Anakin Skywalker. He is smart for his age, she thinks, but clearly sheltered. She also had the nagging feeling that he'd grow up to be a handful for his single mother. She likes him though and realizes he is one of the better kids she has ever been paid to watch.

When his mother comes home from work that evening Padmé bids both mother and son farewell but not before catching little Anakin (or Ani, as she preferred) off guard by giving him a hug. "Maybe I'll watch you again sometime?" Padmé both asked and stated as she looked up at his mother Shmi who offered her a kind smile. Padmé had already explained to Ms Skywalker that she was saving up the money she earned from her babysitting jobs for college tuition and that every little bit helped.

"I'll call you when I need you sweetie," Shmi assured her and Padmé's smile grew even brighter. She felt a tug on her shirt sleeve then and looking back down Anakin was regarding her with cool and impressively blue eyes. Kneeling down slightly yet again (though truth be told she wasn't much taller than the eight year old) she reached his eye level.

"I like you, Padmé," he began tentatively as if a little embarrassed, "But I don't **need** a babysitter. I'm _grown_."

Above them Shmi laughed at her son and gently stroked his blond head. "You aren't grown. Not yet, Anakin. Not yet." Shmi said with something that sounded like relief.

Rising back up to her full height, "Yes, not yet Ani," Padmé said in agreement. "You'll be one day though. And until then try not to wish your time away and grow up too fast."

With that Padmé gathered her royal blue backpack and left the quaint apartment that belonged to the small Skywalker family and made her short track back to her own home.

She'd look forward to watching little Ani again. He was a nice boy and it was easy money put towards the worthy cause of a better education.

As fate would have it before she could however her parents decided to relocate to be closer to her father's place of work. And as time so often does it eventually ebbed and ate away at her clear memory of the young boy she watched for several hours until she eventually forgot about piercing blue eyes and an almost endearing insistence on being old enough to care for himself.

She probably would have never remembered him again had it not been for the little fact that over ten years later she decided to uproot her life in her home of Naboo to move back to the busy city of Coruscant.

She doesn't think about him - she can't even _remember_ him until she sees him again for the first time. His eyes bright and vivid and instantly recognizable bringing back a small set of memories of a cute little blond boy half a foot shorter than herself.

Times change things.

The first thing she says to him, which if she could she would take back, is something inanely silly. She blurts the words out before she can stop them.

He towers over her now and even dwarfs his mother who is a tall woman herself. "You didn't listen." Padmé says, her mind only recalling their last words while staring up at the young man before her.

The boy- well, man albeit young man looked at her oddly, tilting his head to the side. "Excuse me?" he asks perplexed and a little annoyed that he seemed to have no idea what was going on while his mother appeared to be on the same page as Padmé.

Averting her own brown eyes Padmé finds she is able to think coherently once more and says while look at Shmi, "I told him not to grow up. Look's like he didn't listen," she smiles warmly but takes care to avoid his gaze less she become less eloquent again.

It is nice to see them again but it is high-noon and she has to be at her work and they have somewhere to be as well. "It was very good to see you again Padmé." Shmi says kindly, lightly embracing the young woman. "You can stop by anytime. It's been so long. We still live at the same place."

"Not for long..." Anakin muttered under his breath, a slight blush tinging his cheeks that Padmé was able to steal a glance at.

"Oh don't mind him. He's just sour because he's still living with his mother at nineteen, but I told him again and again that he shouldn't be embarrassed about it." And as if seeing reenactment from the past Padmé watches as the loving mother tousles her son's blond hair, though now she has to reach up to do so.

Though Anakin clearly looks annoyed and maybe even slightly embarrassed he doesn't pull away from his mother's affection.

Able once again to see a glimpse of the strange little boy and not the actual man before her Padmé finds herself able to look at Anakin once more. Smiling in what she thinks is a motherly fashion, "Nothing wrong with that at all. Like I said: Don't grow up too fast, Ani."

Though they are standing on the sidewalk and the hot summer sun is blazing down on them as the hot bodies of people walk around their still figures, the heat and bustle of it all dulls to the intensity of Anakin's gaze when the two of them lock eyes once more. It isn't malicious, or frightening. But it's _something_...something Padmé isn't sure of in the least.

"But you said yourself, Padmé," he says her name for the first time. "I already have."


End file.
